JOHN DICKSON CARR – The Corpse in the Waxworks. Harper & Brothers, US, hardcover, 1932. British edition published as The Waxworks Murder: Hamish Hamilton, hc, 1932. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft, including: Avon, paperback, no number [#33], 1943; Dell #775, pb,1954; Collier, pb, 1965 plus several reprintings.

   The Corpse in the Waxworks is an early John Dickson Carr novel, one of the small set of highly Gothic tales set in France with “Satanic” series detective Henri Bencolin, whom Carr was to abandon after this tale (with the exception of one 1937 novel, The Four False Weapons, where Bencolin unfortunately is much toned down as a menacing, Mephistophelian character).

   It’s an effective tale, and it offers a nice break in style from many of the Fell and Merrivale stories.

   Waxworks quotes Edgar Allen Poe, and for good reason. The book is filled with gloom and grotesques and the writing is highly florid, with long descriptive paragraphs. Though not on the whole so much to my taste as his later, rather more stripped-down (though often still evocative) style, I think it is quite well done in Waxworks.

   The mystery, involving a girl stabbed to death and left in the arms of a wax satyr in a museum’s Hall of Horrors, is a good one and fairly clued, although without all the long descriptive passages and a lengthy dramatic episode involving the dubious infiltration of a sinister sex club, the Club of Masks, by Jeff Marle, Bencolin’s young “Watson,” the book would actually be pretty short.

   Overall, I’m reminded with Waxworks of Carr’s later historical mysteries from the 1950s and 1960s, though Waxworks is much more Gothic. Systematic criminal investigation seems to take something of a back seat to colorful, exciting episodes.

   For me the very best part of Waxworks is the conclusion, highly dramatic confrontation between Bencolin and the murderer. I cannot say much, but I’ll just point out that Bencolin stays true to the rather the formidable, merciless self Carr fashioned for him in these early tales. You’ll remember this ending.

Editorial Comment:   Curt has recently been re-reading a number of books by John Dickson Carr. This is the third in a series of reviews he wrote as a result. The Man Who Could Not Shudder was the second, and you can read it here.

QIU XIAOLONG – When Red Is Black. Soho Crime, hardcover, July 2004; trade paperback, August 2005.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading characters:   Sergeant Yu & Inspector Chen Cao, 3rd in series. Setting:   Shanghai, China–Contemporary/1990s.

First Sentence: Detective Yu Guangming of the Shanghai Police Bureau stood alone, still reeling of the blow.

   Inspector Chen Cao is taking time off from his role with the police. He has been asked to translate a business proposal for a triad-related businessman. The proposal is for the construction of a new shopping/residential complex in Shanghai called the New World.

   Both the salary and the benefits are too good to resist, but Chen ultimately finds everything has strings.

   With Chen unavailable, Sgt. Yu must take charge of the newest investigation. Yin was a college teacher and novelist living in a tiny room in a multi-family house. While she wasn’t well liked, she kept to herself. With the house locked at night, was she murdered by a neighbor? If so, why did they ransack her room but not take her money?

   Qiu Xiaolong (pronounced “chew shao-long”) has become one of my favorite authors. He creates such a strong sense of place with wonderful descriptions, from the largest panorama to the smallest detail.

   The inclusion of both Chinese and western poetry is something I so appreciate and enjoy. Food plays such a significant role in China. Its inclusion is so well done and, even if some of the particular dishes may not appeal to my western palate, I always end up hungry while reading. There is one particular scene when Chen goes to a restaurant with 1930s European style serving supposedly western food which was very interesting.

   I learned so much about life during the Cultural Revolution; a period about which I know virtually nothing. It is interesting to read about the lasting impact on those who lived through it as well as the confusion of living in a rapidly changing China.

   I very much enjoy Qui’s characters. While I was glad Chen wasn’t completely absent from the scene, it was nice to have Yu and his wife, Peiqin, move to the forefront. Not only did I learn more about them and their lives, but saw all the major characters grow and develop as the book progressed.

   The plot is very effective. I find the difference in the style of questioning fascinating but the process of following the leads is the same in all cultures.

   My one criticism would be that the confession of the killer seemed abrupt, but that could be a cultural difference as well. I did think the ending was excellent. I highly recommend When Red is Black although, as always, I suggest starting the series at the beginning.

Rating:   Very Good.

The Inspector Chen series —

      1. Death of a Red Heroine (2000)

      2. A Loyal Character Dancer (2002)
      3. When Red Is Black (2004)
      4. A Case of Two Cities (2006)
      5. Red Mandarin Dress (2007)
      6. The Mao Case (2009)

      7. Years of Red Dust (forthcoming, 2010)

JOSEPH NATHENSON – The Library of Alex Brandt. Manor, paperback original, 1978.

   In spite of this cover blurb, angled above a devilish bloke in a stage magician’s outfit, gesturing at an open book and some skimpy laboratory paraphernalia, the novel owes almost nothing to Lovecraft and is another of those endless tales of a loony-bin psycho who has a hangup about the “woman-whore” and does something violent and bloody about it periodically.

   What gives this Manor cheapie some interest is that the psycho is also a book collector and there are splendid thrift shop book hunting sequences. The first-person narrator also has a sense of humor and introduces a brutish chap to mumble an unforgettable line when he is asked by the narrator if he is looking for an S. S. Van Dine thriller:

   I rather suspect Mr. Nathenson of throwing in the gore to ensure the publication of a highly subversive book that may lure some of the incipient psychos who drool over it to experience the even more sexually exciting pleasures of the Book Hunt.

Editorial & Bibliographic Comments:   I have no cover image to go with this book, alas. When Walter sent me this review, earlier today, he said he wrote it in 1979, and “I didn’t keep a copy of the book, but if I had I would be inclined to reread it.”

   I suspect that this is the only review that Joseph Nathenson received for any of the four books credited to him in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

   He also wrote one New Age or sci-fi novel Deep, Very Deep Space: A Journey to the Infinite (Manor, 1978). He’s also generally considered to have been the author of Land of Dreams, a historical romance for Harlequin in 1995 under the byline of Cheryl St. John. (Other books by Cheryl St. John do not appear to have been by him.)

   A brief obituary notice can be found here: http://www.jewishjournal.com/obituaries/article/obituaries_20061020/

[UPDATE] 06-17-10.   A comment left by Cheryl St. John states that the book Land of Dreams is definitely one she wrote, not Mr. Nathenson.

JOHN SLADEK –

    ● Black Aura. Walker, hardcover, 1979; paperback, 1983. UK editions: Jonathan Cape, hc, 1974; Panther, pb, 1975.

    ● Invisible Green. Walker, hardcover, 1979; paperback, 1983. UK edition: Victor Gollancz, hc, 1977.

   In the excellent introduction to his Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes, Bob Adey calls John Sladek “the main, if not the sole, contender for the crown that John Dickson Carr wore for so long,” that is, the king of the impossible crime story.

   On the basis of these two books, I’d certainly agree. They are clever, ingenious problems that recall the atmosphere of the 30s, while being firmly based in the 70s.

   Sladek, like his detective Thackeray Phin, an American living in England, won the Times Of London detective story competition in 1972 with his short story ”From an Unknown Hand.” Part of his prize was a contract for a full-length novel, Black Aura, which Bob Adey says is far superior to the short story.

   Phin, a sort of deliberately eccentric private eye, is intrigued by a death involving the Aetheric Mandala Society, a sort of occult commune based in a big house in London. He manages to get himself invited to join the group and eventually solves two further deaths, a disappearance from a locked, watched lavatory, and a levitation from a fourth story window.

   This he does cleverly, and Sladek handles both problems with a nice bit of misdirection worthy of Carr. The characters are eccentric and well-defined, the atmosphere is suitably Carrian.

   Invisible Green, though written and published second in England, appeared first here. It concerns a planned reunion of the Seven Unravellers, an ill-assorted group of mystery fans who last met in 1940, more than thirty years earlier.

   Miss Deborah Pharoah, the only female member of the group, has planned the reunion, and it ls she who calls in Thackeray Phin when a number of petty crimes involving the colors of the spectrum (stolen violets, an orange thrown through a window, etc.) culminates in death.

   The solution is very clever and well worked out, and probably the best part of the book. I enjoyed it, but would rate it slightly below Black Aura. I do recommend both of these, and hope Sladek writes many more.

Editorial Comment:   Alas, these are the only two novels in which Phin appeared. Besides the short story that Jeff mentions above, there was one other, “It Takes Your Breath Away,” printed in theatre programmes for a London play sometime in 1974. It can be found in Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek, edited by David Langford. More information can be found here.

KING SOLOMON’S MINES. Gaumont British Pictures, 1937. Paul Robeson, Cedric Hardwicke, Roland Young, Anna Lee, John Loder, Arthur Sinclair, Arthur Goullett. Michael Hogan, primary scriptwriter; Roland Pertwee, dialogue; based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard. Director: Robert Stevenson.

   In 1950, when the next adaptation of King Solomon’s Mines appeared — the one with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr — everybody I knew went to see it, my parents and everyone in our extended family, everybody in my grade, including me.

   But I was only eight years old, and while bits and pieces sound familiar to me from reading reviews in Maltin and online, I don’t remember much more than that and I haven’t seen it since.

   I’ve just purchased it on DVD, though, and you can bet I’ll be watching it sometime soon. In the meantime, this 1937 version came up the other day (or rather overnight) on Turner Classic Movies, so of course I taped it and have even managed to find time to watch it.

   I found it rather slow moving at first, but once our adventurers find their way across the desert — in search of fortune-hunting father of Kathy O’Brien (Anna Lee) — and they’re captured by natives within sight of where the famed diamond mine should be, the pace picks up considerably.

   The special effects — the lake of lava inside the cave where the mine is — are special, indeed, the characters stalwart and strong, and good-looking, too, some of them!

   And there’s some comedy to go along with the adventure, too, not to mention a couple of stout-hearted songs from Paul Robeson as Umbopa, their black guide who has a claim to be the true leader of the native tribe who have them all as prisoners — the leader of whom is quite a blood-thirsty fellow. Luckily one of the fortune-hunters has an entry in his diary that helps save the day, at least temporarily.

   Quite remarkably, the leading billing goes to Paul Robeson, exactly as in the credits above. Cedric Hardwick, as Allan Quatermain, while sedate and professorial in nature and always with pipe in hand, is definitely the man in charge, while Anna Lee (later of General Hospital fame on TV) was quite young, high-spirited and beautiful in 1937. (She was a mere lass of 24 at the time.)

   All in all, an enjoyable experience. It does cry out to have been filmed in color, but black and white it was, and as such it had to suffice until 1950 came along, and the red-haired beauty of Deborah Kerr.

RICHARD MATHESON – Someone Is Bleeding. Lion #137, paperback original, 1953. Reprinted in Noir – Three Novels of Suspense: Someone Is Bleeding; Fury on Sunday; Ride the Nightmare: Forge, hardcover & trade ppbk, 2005. (Previous limited edition: G & G Books, hc, 1997.)   Film: Fox-Lira, France, 1974, as Les Seins de Glace (Icy Breasts).

   While Richard Matheson would go on to become a major figure in the fields of fantasy and science fiction with such distinguished works as I Am Legend and his Shock! series of short-story collections, his first novel was solidly criminous — a book whose influences ran heavily to James M. Cain and Hemingway.

   Someone Is Bleeding is the somewhat overwrought tale of writer David Newton who meets a lovely but deeply disturbed young woman named Peggy Lister and falls into tormented love with her.

   Peggy, icon that she is, is surrounded by men whose overwhelming desire in life is to possess her. Because of her psychological problems, possession means keeping her physically around them — since it is unlikely that anyone will ever have her heart or mind, given her pathological distrust of men, which seems to stem from having been raped by her father.

   For its era, Bleeding was a surprisingly complex psychosexual tale. Peggy, a dark goddess who literally rules the fives of her men, is all the more chilling a woman for the sympathetic way in which David sees her for most of the book. She is the helpless, beautiful woman-child that many men fantasize about and long to protect as proof of their own masculinity.

   As the novel rushes to its truly terrifying climax (it is an ending that must rank, for pure horror, with the best of Fredric Brown and Cornell Woolrich), we see how much Peggy comes to represent the pawn in a quest. Her men are willing to scheme, lie, and die to have her.

   Despite its foreshortened structure, which gives it the singular tone of a short story, and despite the fact that the prose occasionally becomes overheated — one wishes for a flash of humor once in a while — Someone Is Bleeding is a satisfyingly complex, evocative study of loneliness, dream and pathology.

   Matheson also gives us an exceptionally good look at the Fifties and its snake-pit moral code, its demeaning view of women, its defeated view of men. He packs an icy poetry, a bittersweet love song, and moments of real terror into this debut.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

Note:   This novel by Richard Matheson was previously reviewed on this blog by Dan Stumpf.

THE GIRL WITHOUT A SOUL. Metro Pictures, 1917. Viola Dana, Robert Walker, Fred C. Jones, Henry Hallam, Margaret Seddon. Director: John Collins. Shown at Cinesation 1993, Saginaw MI.

   Another Viola Dana rural melodrama, directed by her husband, John Collins. She plays sisters, one a talented musician in love with a bounder, the other a rambunctious, untamed young girl loved (discreetly) by a carpenter, who resembles a young Abe Lincoln.

   Dana plays the two roles superbly, and the film climaxes with a taut trial (presided over by future Lord of Mongo, Charles Middleton). This plot probably played well on the stage in the 19th century, and the skill of the treatment of the material makes it possible to understand the appeal of East Lynne for a supposedly unsophisticated audience.

   At any rate, a charming film that doesn’t deserve to be buried as a footnote in film history. (The print was a bit rough, but it has been maintained, if not restored. Some of the longer intertitles flash by too quickly for reading, and there is one major continuity lapse, where a portion of the film could not be saved.)

Editorial Comment:   It’s not relevant to Walter’s review, I grant you, except that an article by Dave Kehr in today’s New York Times is about silent films, and if you are a fan of silent films, it is Big News indeed.

   The piece begins thusly:

    “A late silent feature directed by John Ford, a short comedy directed by Mabel Normand, a period drama starring Clara Bow and a group of early one-reel westerns are among a trove of long-lost American films recently found in the New Zealand Film Archive.

    “Some 75 of these movies, chosen for their historical and cultural importance, are in the process of being returned to the United States under the auspices of the National Film Preservation Foundation…”

L. R. WRIGHT – Sleep While I Sing. Penguin, US, paperback reprint, October 1987. Bantam Seal, Canada, pb, 1998. Hardcover edition: Viking, US, 1986.

Genre:   Traditional mystery/police procedural. Leading character:   Staff Sgt. Karl Alberg, 2nd in series. Setting:   Victoria, B.C., Canada.

First Sentence: The clearing lay fifty feet from the two-lane Sunshine Coast Highway.

   Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, who never wears his uniform, is looking for the killer of an unknown woman whose throat was slit before her body was propped against a tree and her face washed.

   Alberg’s top suspect is a visiting actor, but there is a complication; he is currently dating the town’s librarian, Casandra Mitchell, to whom Alberg is attracted. But is the case on the right track?

   I read the first book in this series several years ago and don’t know why I’ve not been back as I really like Wright’s writing. She creates a wonderful sense of place with such evocative descriptions… “It [the rain] fell heavily, but meant no harm.”

   I so appreciate which an author’s voice causes you to stop and imagine. The characters are very interesting and very well drawn. Alberg is assured professionally, but much less so personally.

   The female characters are confident yet bemused by their reactions to the actor who is Ahlberg’s primary suspect. You get a real feel for each of the characters and with some very effective red herrings, it’s not easy to identify the killer.

   The plot is well constructed. The suspense and feeling of menace are created with subtlety but are very much in evidence. Subtle is the perfect word for Wright’s style.

   The plot unfolds piece-by-piece in a way that makes sense. This is a very good traditional mystery. It won’t be nearly so long until I read the next book in this series.

Rating:   Very Good.

       The Karl Alberg series —

1. The Suspect (1985)

2. Sleep While I Sing (1986)
3. A Chill Rain in January (1990)
4. Fall from Grace (1991)
5. Prized Possessions (1993)

6. A Touch of Panic (1994)
7. Mother Love (1995)
8. Strangers Among Us (1995)
9. Acts of Murder (1997)

THE MAD MISS MANTON. RKO Radio Pictures, 1938. Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levine, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges, Whitney Bourne, Ann Lester, Catherine O’Quinn, Linda Terry, Hattie McDaniel, James Burke, Paul Guilfoyle, Penny Singleton, Grady Sutton. Screenplay by Philip G. Epstein, based on a story by Wilson Collison. Directed by Leigh Jason.

   Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is one in a long line of screwball heiresses who marched blithely though films of the nineteen-thirties and manage to hang on in one guise or another in films today.

   Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) started the vogue (before that rich heiresses had tended to be more predatory than zany), and here the genre gets a kick from another film that debuted the same year as It Happened One Night, The Thin Man.

   By 1938 RKO had already given us the definitive screwball heiress comedy in Katherine Hepburn in Howard Hawks Bringing Up Baby. The Mad Miss Manton isn’t quite in that class, but it is a fine mix of screwball comedy and comedy mystery played by an outstanding cast and with the kind of bright brittle and sparkling wit we can only regret real life heiresses and their entourage seldom display (hard to imagine Paris Hilton as Melsa Manton).

   As the film opens Melsa has left a costume party early and arrives home still in her Bo Peep costume to walk her six yapping Pomeranians before bedtime, but when she spies a man leaving the deserted Lane mansion and the dogs start acting strange she goes inside and finds a body, so she summons the police.

   Arriving on scene to find himself confronted by Bo Peep is Lt. Brent, Sam Levine, a character actor who made a career of sane exasperated cops plagued by the likes of Melsa Manton and Nick and Nora Charles. He’s dubious to begin with, and when no body can be found and he learns who Melsa is:

   It’s that kind of logic that gives cops ulcers. Which is why Lt. Brent is always sending someone out for a bicarbonate of soda.

   To add insult to injury, newspaper editor Peter Ames (Henry Fonda) has begun a crusade against Melsa in his column in his newspaper, the latest installment of which brings Melsa storming in to sue him and slug him — and get slugged in return.

   But as these things go, first they fight and then they romance, and one look at Melsa in the flesh is enough for Peter Ames, especially since he now has to convince her not to sue the paper for a million dollars just in case a corpse does show up and her wild tale proves true.

   Meanwhile Melsa summons her posse of rich girl friends, a bevy of silver fox clad beauties all as mad as Miss Manton for a war conference in her apartment to the bemusement of her maid, Hilda (Hattie McDaniel), especially when the killer returns the cloak Melsa lost at the murder scene with a knife and a threat penned to it.

   Racist, probably, and certainly stereotyped, but somehow I always found Miss McDaniel, Mantan Moreland, Stepin Fechit, and Willie Best the only sane voice of reason in this sort of film, or as Hattie’s Hilda adds: “You white folks don’ know what’s good for you.”

   Good advice, but you can be sure Melsa and her pals aren’t going to listen to it anymore than Brent or Peter will listen to her when she and her pals find playboy Ronnie Belden in his own refrigerator with a knife in his chest. When Brent tells her to keep the body on ice, believing she and her friends are up to their old tricks, they take the body and plant it in the lobby of Peter’s newspaper.

   That’ll teach him.

   So Brent rounds the girls up and arrests them, only Peter calls Melsa’s father:

   But with a real body involved, Brent and Peter both have to take Melsa and her friends more seriously, but can’t convince them this isn’t a game. But Peter is drawn in and even ends up hiring a safecracker to help him investigate when the girls show up as he is about to check out a suspects office:

   And so it goes, bright and brittle dialogue, a pretty good mystery, and a well done solution that ends with a royal melee in which the ladies are as much a hindrance as a help.

   Brent stops the killer and a bullet, but as Peter and Melsa bend over him to bring him to their eyes meet and:

   Murder to one side, there isn’t a serious bone in the film’s body, but it is a fast moving, bright and smart entry in the screwball heiress stakes and never pauses long enough to let you complain.

   Philip G. Epstein co-wrote Casablanca and his other screen credits include Mr. Skeffington, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Strawberry Blonde, and Arsenic and Old Lace.

   The original screen story is from Wilson Collison, who among other things created Maisie, the heroine of the long running Ann Sothern film series, in his novel Dark Dame (1935). Leigh Jason directed many films and later television including Richard Diamond with David Jansen.

   Fast paced and wickedly clever, with a cast of stars all shining and hitting their marks, you may find yourself enjoying this much more than it merits, but by any standard it is an entertaining outing that is a model of the form.

   Watching directors struggle and fail today to produce this kind of clever film you have to wonder at the casual magic these films once produced. Like a good dessert champagne, this tickles your palates and lightens your mood, which is exactly what it was intended for.

JOHN DICKSON CARR – The Man Who Could Not Shudder. Harper & Brothers, US, hardcover, 1940. UK edition: Hamish Hamilton, 1940. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including and shown here: Bantam #365, 1949; Zebra, 1986.

   I wrote first-rate! in my paperback copy of this The Man Who Could Not Shudder back in 1993 — when as a young person I was first buying Carr, all those nice IPL, Harper and Zebra editions had come out, and Carr was very much alive and well in paperback, in contrast with today. On re-reading I really enjoyed this one, though this was one where I actually recalled most of the resolution as I read.

   This is the one involving the miracle problem of guest at a country house party who is shot in the study of the house by a gun that seemingly moves of its volition. Did I mention the house is supposed to be haunted? There are strange stories of an ankle grabbing ghost of a former owner of the house who died in 1820 and, from a hundred years later,of a chandelier-swinging, octogenarian butler who died when the chandelier crash down on him.

   Though is a haunted house tale, Carr does not lay on the Gothic shudders heavily this time. It’s a very modern haunted house, convincingly set in the late 1930s, with characters who act like real, normal people. (We do have one silly outburst of jealousy on the part of the narrator’s girlfriend, but that soon subsides.)

   A couple of the characters, including the egoistic current owner of the house and one of the female guests, who is the highly desired wife of the murder victim, are very well done. (Concerning the latter there’s some discussion about sex that is pretty explicit for the period.)

   Dr. Fell is on hand, but I didn’t find his mannerisms irritating here. Inspector Elliot appears too — Shudder is a prequel to his later appearances in The Crooked Hinge and, what I believe was his last appearance, The Black Spectacles.

   Shudder is one of Carr’s more John Rhodeian tales (I won’t say more, but Rhode readers who have read Shudder will know what I mean). It also takes place in John Street’s (the man who was John Rhode) personal territory: coastal, southern England.

   Written shortly after the two friends collaborated on Fatal Descent/Drop to His Death, Shudder is, like The Reader Is Warned, a novel I could see being discussed over pints by the two men.

   It’s also worth noting that the 1943 John Rhode novel, Men Die at Cyprus Lodge, involves a haunted house and some other bits similar to Shudder, though the plot turns out quite differently.

   The murder method in Shudder is, as usual with Carr, cleverly clued; and there’s the bonus as well of a triple twist solution. The reader who makes it through all these hoops will be clever indeed. One action by Fell I thought outrageous, but for me it was explained sufficiently by the end, when we also learn that justice has been done.

Editorial Comment:   Curt recently undertook the task of re-reading a number of books by John Dickson Carr. This is the second in a series of reviews he wrote as a result. He Who Whispers was the first to appear, and you can read it here.